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Michigan hasn't declined that much:

http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GRTTable?_bm=y&-_box_head_nbr=R1901&-ds_name=ACS_2007_1YR_G00_&-_lang=en&-format=US-30&-CONTEXT=grt

Basically, there are a bunch of states where there wasn't ever much industry.

First, there are car seats that are narrow.

Second, you are right, not all families will fit into a sedan. But according to the US census, the average US family size is 3.14 people. Having more kids is a choice that comes with an economic impact.

so why should your view trump mine?

Because there are 6,779,433,891+ of us and one (1) of you. Artificial scarcity is a pain when it blocks the free speech rights of 6.7B people so that a single person can increase (not have) their profit. We should abrogate people's free speech rights as little as possible. Because many people create information/entertainment/software with no explicit payment at all and because we are already suffering a massive entertainment/information/software glut it is not at all clear we should have any explicit, additional incentive for people to create at all. Additional incentives on top of kudos and other incentives such as live shows, book readings, mind share etc.

---

It's not piracy, it's sharing. Didn't your parents teach you to share?

The system that you describe...trial by a jury of your peers, clear rules, people expected to keep their word. It sounds nice, but are you sure that we don't have it already?

Absolutely CERTAIN.
....However, just because I'm sure doesn't mean I'm right.

Allow my to explain my perspective, and lets see if anyone can show me my errors or assumptions.

Your first condition, "trial by a jury of your peers" depends largely on your definition of "peer".
According to Legal definition

"A peer is a person's equal. The U.S. Constitution guarantees criminal defendants a "jury of one's peers," which means an impartial group of citizens from the judicial district (e.g. county) in which the defendant lives."

Let's break this down further.
"A peer is a person's equal": I am a college educated male, between the ages of 25-35. I am fairly well versed in current events, active in the local community, and own my own business.
I think that it's safe to say that my equal would be best defined by these same demographics.
If it was possible, I would prefer to be judged by people with an equivalent intelligence level as well, but lets not get picky.

"an impartial group of citizens from the judicial district (e.g. county) in which the defendant lives": I live in the state capital of Louisiana (southern usa). According to Wikipedia "As of the census of 2000" "The per capita income for the city was $18,512. About 18.0% of families and 24.0% of the population were below the poverty line"
Since 2000, these numbers have worsened, the current poverty rate is above 25% according to the 2007 census. link
Also, better than 20% of our local population never finished high school. Census data
Additionally, I have been called for jury duty, as have many of my friends and associates. As a rule, the people who are educated, intelligent, and successful are removed from the jury pool in the first or second round. I understand that this is anecdotal evidence, but it's fairly common to wind up with a jury of the lowest common denominator. Intelligent, educated people are hard to convince, and hard to manipulate, which makes a lawyers job harder. Unfortunately out legal system doesn't weigh issues on thier own merits, but on the ability of the lawyers to argue instead.

So, what do you think the chances are of my having a jury of my equals?

Your second condition, "clear rules" is easier to define.
Clear rules would mean that the average American could read and understand exactly what was expected of them, the punishments involved, and how the legal system operated, in enough detail as to be able to successfully sue or defend themselves in court.

Or to make things even simpler, simply define the rules in such a way that the average American can at least understand what is going on in court, and participate in their own defense.

According to many different research groups, the US has a deplorable literacy rate. I'm not going to write a full analysis here, but there is a fairly good one Here
To summarize, 50% of our population reads at less than a 7th grade level.
So, what in the world makes people think that the average American can read, parse, and cross reference 1000's of obscure words, hundreds of referenced precedents, and actually understand it?

As for your last requirement, "people expected to keep their word" this is subjective, and the parent was referring to people with "integrity" not just honesty.
Unfortu

I wasn't aware that Janet Napolitano was an Arizonan. Knowing that, I think they couldn't have picked a worse person for the job. Arizona is, in my opinion, probably the most xenophobic and racist state in the nation now. This is a state that doesn't celebrate Martin Luther King Day, fer chrissakes. If you ask a resident, their stated objection will be that it's a slippery slope -- first we'll have a holiday for Martin Luther King, and next we'll be having one for Cesar Chavez. I've heard this exact argument more than once from people who don't know each other. Never mind that the population of Arizona is already 30 percent hispanic ; God forbid we should honor an American of Mexican descent with a holiday. Never mind that Cesar Chavez was dedicated to the rights of workers; God forbid we should choose to give workers a day off in his honor.

My mother retired to Arizona with her husband some years ago. She now regularly forwards joke emails from her friends about the Mexicans and the damn immigrants. This surprises me ... because just like me, my mother is a first-generation immigrant. Why the jokes about Green Cards? We used to have Green Cards. Why the jokes about stealing our jobs? We both came here and got jobs, too. And besides, my mom hasn't worked in years. She collects Social Security now. Imagine that, an immigrant on Social Security. But I guess once you move to a racist, xenophobic place, it's hard to keep those ideas from sinking in.

Sorry, any Arizonans out there -- but Arizona and the attitudes that fester there are simply sickening. It's no surprise to me that Janet Napolitano doesn't get it.

Yes. Just because some people who work for Obama and a couple local politicians say that there is shortage, doesn't mean there is one. According to the graphic on that article, there are four states with fewer than 70 doctors per 100,000 people, and the various states I've lived in have a below-average number of doctors.

Let's summarize the article:

• Obama administration officials are alarmed at doctor shortages.
• Family doctors and internists are pressing congress to pay them more money.
• Many of the solutions proposed advance the actual goal of the Obama administration, which is to create government-run health care.
• A Democrat from Nevada says that there are not enough doctors in primary care or in any specialty.
• A Republic from Utah said something unintelligible about a work force.
• There are various anecdotes that support this theory.
• A Democrat from Montana says that the government is not paying doctors enough.
• Orthopaedic surgeons don't want to be paid less.
• The Association of American Medical Colleges wants more students.
• Massachusetts has a problem which is not quite defined. The only statement is that there are people using emergency rooms for nonemergency care. Reasons not stated. Massachusetts has more doctors per capita than most other states.
• There's a doctor in Idaho that flies to a nearby county because there are no doctors, even though the county is "bigger than Rhode Island". So let's check some facts...the census says there are about 4,000 people in the entire county. And note that the doctor isn't complaining, he's getting paid enough to fly there and see patients.
• The government is running clinics and those clinics are having a hard time finding doctors and nurses. Could this be because few people want to work for government clinics? Unknown, they don't even speculate as the cause.

Looks like this article was written to give you the firm belief that there are shortages of doctors.

There are actually 7,569 hospitals in the US according to The US Census as of 2005.

Of those, your company may have been billing 1,500 of them for some sort of electronic system... but that doesn't mean that they had a "comprehensive EMR system" as stated in the article.

Only one such user is needed

Yep, only one in a world population of 6,770,000,000+ people.

Compare that to the odds of being struck by lightning in a lifetime: 1 in 5000.

In other words if you had the same odds of finding DRM breaker as a person who will be struck by lightning you're talking more than a million people.

Information really does "want" to be free, whatever the reactionaries might like to claim.

That's not picking nits, IMO.

I get unsolicited Mexican spam several times a week. I speak just enough to know that it's a scam service offering to extend my car's warranty.

I also notice that when I go to the store, almost every single label has both English and Mexican* on it even though as of now the Hispanic population is only about 15% of the over-all US population. (source: http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/population/011910.html )

I wouldn't move to Italy and expect them to have every label in English, (hell, maybe they do, but I doubt it) I'd expect to learn the language of the country I'm living in, not create my own culture and ignore the language of the country I'm in. I know this sounds xenophobic, and some mod's probably going to call this flamebait but it's not intended to be, merely my observations, having lived in and around Hispanic population centers for much of my life. (San Diego, NM, Texas, and now Northern VA)

*I call it Mexican because it isn't Spanish. "Spain" Spanish and Mexican "Spanish" are not the same, and while the root structure is the same, the slang and many of the verbs are not.

Lately? It is still huge, but it actually shrank a bit the last two years (the graph cites this file as source data, but is 3 years out of date):

http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/historical/gands.txt

And a little less than half of it is oil, which isn't exactly a threat to our ability to manufacture (it is just an expensive habit):

http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/Press-Release/current_press_release/exh9.txt

There isn't really anything good about a huge trade deficit, but a ~trillion dollar trade deficit doesn't really prove that a 14 trillion dollar economy is rotten to the core (but I would agree that there are lots of problems).

Lately? It is still huge, but it actually shrank a bit the last two years (the graph cites this file as source data, but is 3 years out of date):

http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/historical/gands.txt

And a little less than half of it is oil, which isn't exactly a threat to our ability to manufacture (it is just an expensive habit):

http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/Press-Release/current_press_release/exh9.txt

There isn't really anything good about a huge trade deficit, but a ~trillion dollar trade deficit doesn't really prove that a 14 trillion dollar economy is rotten to the core (but I would agree that there are lots of problems).

No, just about every affluent country has negative population growth. The total populations of affluent countries are increasing only due to immigration.

Well, yes and no. What your referring to is the natural growth rates. Well, I assume that is because your link which displayed information from Wikipedia wouldn't show anything but the links to Wikipedia for me. Anyways, the natural growth rate is currently around .8 to .9 percent for the US per year. The rest is immigration as you mention. The problem is that the growth rate is not exactly exponential, it is compounded and influenced directly by the immigration. So lets say that a real population increase is 2% but only .8% is natural growth. Lets also assume that we have 100 people. In the first year, we would have a total of 102 people with .8 of them being from live births and 1.2 of them being immigrants. But the next year, if things stay the same, we now have 2% of 102 people making it 104.2 people total with .83 of them natural and 1.25 being imported. So lets say this goes on for 10 years, using a simple compound interest calculation with the values of 100 at the start and 2% increase per year for 10 years, we end up with 121.9 people. That's a real growth of 21.9% over those 10 years. If after the 10 years we find the savings, then in 10 more years with the same numbers, we would have around 148.6 people. That's only another 21.9% or so increase but 10 years into the furter it would be a real 48% increase in population.

This is what makes it so difficult to go backwards like they attempted to do with Kyoto. In was out and offered roughly 8 years after the 1990 numbers were locked in, signing it, ratifying it, and starting to legislate it could reasonably take another 2 years. That would effectivly take the goal to ten years back but instead of starting with 100 people, you are starting with 121 people. Now if it takes ten years to realize the 30% emissions savings, you then have the 148 people using them. You haven't reached your goals yet.

Lets look at the http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/SAFFPopulation?_submenuId=population_0&_sse=on >USA's population. Now this is going to get a little sloppy because I had trouble finding population information from the same source and this site stops in 2008 which 2010 would fit better. Anyways, in 1990, the US's population was 248,709,873. In 2000 or 10 years later (symbolic of implementing Kyoto standards) the population was 281,421,906. A difference of 32,712,069 people or about 13% more people. The 2008 population says 304,059,724 or 55,349,851 more people then the 1990 levels. This is roughly 22% more people at the end of ten years (actually only 8 of the ten) working towards a ten year old number. Now here is the effect, if each person used x units of energy and produced 10 units of Carbon emissions a year and it took ten years to get a 20% reduction in emissions, we are only 2% under the 1990 levels. That can be negated in one or two years.

And the hard problem we have is that most all processes are at or near peak efficiency. There isn't much more that we can do outside of sequestering the emissions or removing it from the air directly. But again, I have to ask why are we even worrying about it when we don't care about the emissions of 70% or better of the rest of the world? We know that trees aren't the answer unless we cut the trees down and use them for something, we know that wind and solar are too costly at the moment, but all of that is moot when we don't care if there is an increase in total world emissions as long as it doesn't come from the wealthy nations.

I will go into why the immigration is so important when I answer the other

Yes, there are traffic lights all over the world in places nobody has ever heard about. I've lived in towns that didn't have a traffic light. When we got one, everyone came out to the Pizza Inn to watch it turned on. In Europe, that first light would have been made into a roundabout instead.
They got toll free dial up internet in 1995.

Mississippi has an estimated population of 2,918,785. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/28000.html Any town with more than 5,000 people probably has 1 traffic light.

Being from a bigger state, I guess offending people from the smaller states is fun? That's fine. We make fun of the unemployment in California mainly caused by over taxation from the left. New York, we laugh at your taxes too. Hah. Offended? I like to shoot guns and eat meat regardless of whether I killed it myself or bought it at a store.

In Mobile, AL, they have roundabouts in a few neighborhoods. These were created to be so tight as to force cars to slow down and prevent **any** sized commercial truck from going through them. High school drivers work on driving through them without slowing down. I've seen the very quick right-left turn negotiated without hitting any of the curbs, but that isn't the usual method. Normally some scraping occurs. Large cars need to really slow down to fit.

Violation of privacy? You should have no expectation of privacy when you are in public on a public street. If you get caught with your girlfriend or "other" person on a red light camera, then
a) you shouldn't be running red lights
b) you shouldn't be cheating
c) you should register your car with your work address so your wife doesn't get the mail
d) if you are a politician, hire a driver
e) there are too many other ways to avoid this photo - be smarter

There is no right to privacy when you are in public. I don't want it either. Imagine having to get permission to take photographs of interesting views in cities (like you have to in some countries), just because a few locals happen to walk into the frame.

BTW, I've lived the last 20 years in cities with over 4M people. I'm happy about easy access to stores, good restaurants, broadband, and the airport. I don't miss everyone knowing my business, but I do miss being able to walk around the town with my wife on an evening stroll and not even consider traffic as something dangerous.

Boards of Education are trying to teach how a magic man in the sky created everything. Reap what you sow.

I know it's popular around here to bash the religious right and blame them for the decline in science education but I suspect that the problem is with our system itself and not the influence of religious elements. The influence of religion is troubling but the religious-right has lost more often than they've won (Kitzmiller comes to mind) and I don't think it's fair to place a majority of the blame on them.

Consider the fact that most Americans can't find Afghanistan on the map. Consider the fact that we rank 24th in math. How do you blame either of those on religious influences? Math and geography don't stir up a lot of religious dissent the last time I checked. Bottom line: The whole system sucks and you can't blame it all on the creationists.

As for fixing it, I'm not real hopeful. The Democrats solution will invariably be to throw more money at the problem. Given that we are already spending ~$8,300 per student I'm not real hopeful that more money and bureaucracy will solve anything. The Republican solution of unfunded mandates and punishments for failing to meet those mandates doesn't seem very wise either.

My Libertarian leanings would prefer to see less Governmental influence in education. I do find it interesting that many private schools have an annual tuition that's less than the average amount we are paying per student for public schools and manage to turn out higher test scores and better educated/adjusted students. This suggests to me that there could be a marketplace solution to the problem but I have zero optimism that the entrenched interests will ever allow it to happen on a scale large enough to be meaningful.

In short, we are screwed. The only bright side is we still have the best higher educational system in the world. Perhaps the solution is to add a year onto all college programs to correct all of the mistakes that were made during primary education? ;)

Further more it's not difficult to download the appropriate TIGER data base from the Census Bureau via anonymous FTP and just pull out the latitude and longitude of every school in the US from the "named locations" cross reference. If Google in the US can't show you what's there, I'm sure there are satellite photos from Russia available, that's where Google supposedly got their's photo's of Groom Lake/Nellis AFB/Area 51 from.

Further more it's not difficult to download the appropriate TIGER data base from the Census Bureau via anonymous FTP and just pull out the latitude and longitude of every school in the US from the "named locations" cross reference. If Google in the US can't show you what's there, I'm sure there are satellite photos from Russia available, that's where Google supposedly got their's photo's of Groom Lake/Nellis AFB/Area 51 from.

And Dell ? Who uses Dell.

In the Small and Medium Business (SMB) market, they have a 28% share in the USA and 10% worldwide. There are almost a quarter million SMBs in the USA alone.

http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/corporate/about_dell/FYIR_08_Slide_9.jpg
http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/smallbus.html

Apparently quite a lot of business use Dell.

1. I disagree - the amount per person is too small. It would be like one of those $1.60 checks you get in the mail for some class action settlement you'd rather not have been a member of.

Then they shouldn't have sold it. If they couldn't get enough to fully compensate the American people for their trouble, then they sold at a loss. If that's not a crime, it should be.

BTW, they got $19.592 billion for the auction. The US population is about 305 million. That's $64.23 per person.

Wow, that's racist. I didn't say "illegal" immigration, the vast majority of immigrants are legal workers with visas.

Per census bureau data:
Population Growth 2000-2008
CA 8.5%
NY 2.7%

Your high school "probability class" didn't teach you enough.

According to this, there are about 228 million adults in the US.

According to this, 40% of US adults play videogames, or about 91.2 million.

According to this, a confidence level of 95% and a confidence interval of 10% can be achieved on a population of 91.2 million with a sample size of only 97.

So, yes, you can draw something useful from that.

True, but without the electoral college, the politicians wouldn't even both with the state level. Instead they'd just focus on NYC, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond, DC, LA, San Fran, Seattle..... and ignore all the rest of us who don't live in those major cities.

When every vote counts equally, you go where the voters are. 79% of Americans live in urban areas. If candidates aren't focusing their campaigns on population centers - i.e., if they're not going where the voters are - it's a sign that something is broken.

However, you only cite large cities in blue states. (Except Richmond.) In fact, the 10 largest U.S. cites are NYC, LA, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, and San Jose. Four are in red states, and San Diego is a Navy town, not exactly a hotbed of liberalism.

We can argue what the statistics ultimately mean, but the fact remains that (according to my spreadsheet using as sources 1999 and 1790) the standard deviation of population distribution in 1790 was a whopping 5.23%, while in 1999 it was only 2.2%. This means there was an even wider spread of populations in 1790 than in 1999.

So you can argue that power is allocated disproportionately concerning population, but you cannot argue truthfully that the population is more disproportionate now than it was at the time the Constitution was written.*

In the election of 1792, there were 132 electoral votes available to a population of 3,741,110 (based on the 1790 census cited in your link above, subtracting out the populations of Maine, West Virginia, and Tennessee since they didn't cast electoral ballots). That's about 28,342
  people per elector, whereas today, each elector represents (as a national average) about 565,167 people.

This is relevant, because several states have populations FAR smaller than 1,695,500, which is the number of people proportionally represented by 3 electoral votes (the minimum number a state can have). That was true then, also, but not to such a large degree; there were five states with populations lower than 85,025, but the smallest of them (little Rhode Island) only had an overrepresentation factor of 1.6, whereas today, Wyoming's is 3.2. (That is the "average" population per electoral vote nationwide, divided by the population per electoral vote in the state... numbers greater than 1 show overrepresentation; numbers less than 1 show underrepresentation vis a vis the ideal scenario.)

The lowest overrepresentation factor in the 2008 election was Texas, at .789; in the 1792 election, it was Maryland at .709... HOWEVER, Maryland had four available electoral votes which were not cast. Had they cast them, their representation factor would have been 1.03 (taking into account how that changes the total electoral votes available).

Now I'm curious, and I'm going to recalculate all the 1792 numbers with the uncast but available EVs... just six more, four for Maryland and 2 for Vermont, but how does this change the numbers? Let's see...

Ok, now, the magic number (3x the population per EV) is 81,328.48, and only three states fall below it. Virginia's overrep factor is .823, and that's the lowest; they're doing way better than Texas these days. The highest overrep factor is Vermont, with 1.587.

So, in spite of the higher standard deviation, the far, far lower number of people per elector makes for a far more equitable distribution of electoral votes.

Citation: http://www.presidentelect.org/e1792.html for 1792 electoral votes cast.

We can argue what the statistics ultimately mean, but the fact remains that (according to my spreadsheet using as sources 1999 and 1790) the standard deviation of population distribution in 1790 was a whopping 5.23%, while in 1999 it was only 2.2%. This means there was an even wider spread of populations in 1790 than in 1999.

So you can argue that power is allocated disproportionately concerning population, but you cannot argue truthfully that the population is more disproportionate now than it was at the time the Constitution was written.*

In the election of 1792, there were 132 electoral votes available to a population of 3,741,110 (based on the 1790 census cited in your link above, subtracting out the populations of Maine, West Virginia, and Tennessee since they didn't cast electoral ballots). That's about 28,342
  people per elector, whereas today, each elector represents (as a national average) about 565,167 people.

This is relevant, because several states have populations FAR smaller than 1,695,500, which is the number of people proportionally represented by 3 electoral votes (the minimum number a state can have). That was true then, also, but not to such a large degree; there were five states with populations lower than 85,025, but the smallest of them (little Rhode Island) only had an overrepresentation factor of 1.6, whereas today, Wyoming's is 3.2. (That is the "average" population per electoral vote nationwide, divided by the population per electoral vote in the state... numbers greater than 1 show overrepresentation; numbers less than 1 show underrepresentation vis a vis the ideal scenario.)

The lowest overrepresentation factor in the 2008 election was Texas, at .789; in the 1792 election, it was Maryland at .709... HOWEVER, Maryland had four available electoral votes which were not cast. Had they cast them, their representation factor would have been 1.03 (taking into account how that changes the total electoral votes available).

Now I'm curious, and I'm going to recalculate all the 1792 numbers with the uncast but available EVs... just six more, four for Maryland and 2 for Vermont, but how does this change the numbers? Let's see...

Ok, now, the magic number (3x the population per EV) is 81,328.48, and only three states fall below it. Virginia's overrep factor is .823, and that's the lowest; they're doing way better than Texas these days. The highest overrep factor is Vermont, with 1.587.

So, in spite of the higher standard deviation, the far, far lower number of people per elector makes for a far more equitable distribution of electoral votes.

Citation: http://www.presidentelect.org/e1792.html for 1792 electoral votes cast.

To do the math yourself, go to www.census.gov and get state populations (don't forget DC). Then put those in an Excel spreadsheet next to the electoral votes for each state. Divide pop by votes, then sort those numbers. Also calculate the total population by 535, then divide the representation for each state by that number. You'll see who comes out ahead and behind.

I last did this years ago, so I don't have it to hand now, but it's very interesting. There's about one electoral vote per 700,000 people in the US, but Wyoming gets something like 1 per 500,000. California, Texas, and New York each came out at about 700,000, but states like Ohio etc. were more like 800,000.

Although to be fair, the four largest of the original thirteen states had an aggregate population in 1790 greater than 50% of the entire nation's population: VA, PA, NC, and MA sum up to 56% of the population. VA alone was 21% of the entire US population in 1790!

We can argue what the statistics ultimately mean, but the fact remains that (according to my spreadsheet using as sources 1999 and 1790) the standard deviation of population distribution in 1790 was a whopping 5.23%, while in 1999 it was only 2.2%. This means there was an even wider spread of populations in 1790 than in 1999.

So you can argue that power is allocated disproportionately concerning population, but you cannot argue truthfully that the population is more disproportionate now than it was at the time the Constitution was written.*

Of course, I'm not really sure you were even arguing that.

*s/written/composed through time-pressured political compromise

To do the math yourself, go to www.census.gov and get state populations (don't forget DC). Then put those in an Excel spreadsheet next to the electoral votes for each state. Divide pop by votes, then sort those numbers. Also calculate the total population by 535, then divide the representation for each state by that number. You'll see who comes out ahead and behind.

I last did this years ago, so I don't have it to hand now, but it's very interesting. There's about one electoral vote per 700,000 people in the US, but Wyoming gets something like 1 per 500,000. California, Texas, and New York each came out at about 700,000, but states like Ohio etc. were more like 800,000.

Although to be fair, the four largest of the original thirteen states had an aggregate population in 1790 greater than 50% of the entire nation's population: VA, PA, NC, and MA sum up to 56% of the population. VA alone was 21% of the entire US population in 1790!

We can argue what the statistics ultimately mean, but the fact remains that (according to my spreadsheet using as sources 1999 and 1790) the standard deviation of population distribution in 1790 was a whopping 5.23%, while in 1999 it was only 2.2%. This means there was an even wider spread of populations in 1790 than in 1999.

So you can argue that power is allocated disproportionately concerning population, but you cannot argue truthfully that the population is more disproportionate now than it was at the time the Constitution was written.*

Of course, I'm not really sure you were even arguing that.

*s/written/composed through time-pressured political compromise

Where are you getting these numbers?

According to census NJ spends $14,630 per pupil per year. Assuming 13 years (1-12 + kindergarten), that's $190,190. NJ spends the most per student only second to NY. Now I went to NJ public schools and yeah I'll agree we aren't getting the most bang for our buck but it's not $500k like you claim. Also you must realize NJ public schools (like most public schools) are funded through property taxes. NJ not only has some of the highest property taxes in the US but also NJ is ranked second in per capita income.

Nevada is less dense population wise yet has twice the murder rate of the nation and violent crime as well.

http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/tables/09s0297.pdf

(And in its infinite wisdom, Slashdot is now making me wait at least five minutes between posts. in my prior experience, this will become ten and then fifteen. It happens as soon as I get one downmod. I love Slashdot where the GNAA can post as much as they want, but with positive karma, I get effectively censored.)

The US rely too much on potential foreign nationals in their infrastructure, that's a weakness.

And the Chinese government does not view it's population as something to protect, they view them as commodoties.

Mao made a joke on his visit to the US president, I think it was Carter at the time, in discussing trade agreements, he said they had an excess of women, would you like to take some?

When you view things as commodoties, you can easily sacrifice them if it furthers your goal in the long run.

You're right though, a land war between the US and China is unreasonable. Technology is the forefront of any massive battles, and wiping out a nation with a heavy reliance on technology in their infrastructure is a better way. Communication satellites? Network attack?

And whats the point in occupying the US? Their closed culture has a disdain for westerners and western values. It's not like they can't reverse engineer any technology they happen to find surviving. And its not like they are short on people to populate the new country, or even cheap slave level labor.

As far as NEEDING the US. They're not exactly that rich that they're importing alot of luxuries from the US...does the US still manufacture anything they export to China that China couldn't if push came to shove manufacture themselves or import from someone else who would LOVE to have China's business?

China doesn't NEED to export to the US. There are plenty of other countries in the world, and push comes to shove, they can always increase arm trade to places that hate the US. Win-win there really. And even if they are hit financially a bit, they'll simply let the population suffer....more. Commodoties, only as useful as they remain useful, when they become a liability, they are no longer useful and are therefore expendable as long as THAT is beneficial.

Art of War, know your enemy. Survival trait, if wild assumptions makes you an ass, wild assumptions in a fight will make you a dead ass.

And not to mention...they actually track trade deficit with China don't they?

http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html#2008

11 out of the 12 months.

Export to China $66 billion. Import from China $312 billion. Seems like US needs Chinese goods more than they need US. US economy could not handle a hit to massive inflation losing a source of cheap products.

No I think US supremacy in this world is a fallacy long since forgotten by the rest of the world. At most, hate of the US supremacy is remembered still.

Who would want to be the president who 2 weeks after being in office takes television away from 20% of the country.

Would it really be 20%? 14.3 million is the Nielsen estimate that rely on OTA TV. Per the census in 2000, we have 105M households.

That means only 13% of households depend on OTA. Per NTIA - on Dec 17, 2008 11M out of that 14.3M had requested coupons. Overall, 22M households had requested 41M coupons, and 17M redeemed. That means 77% of that 13% has had the opportunity to get a converter box or two.

By my calc, the number of households that would lose the ability to receive OTA broadcasts would be well under 3% at this point. At least some households wouldn't be requesting coupons/buying converter boxes due to purchasing of TVs with digital tuners.

Americans will drop $5k on a 60" hdtv, but don't want to spend a dime on doctor bills to have a baby. WTF?

Those aren't the Americans we're talking about. It never ceases to amaze me how distant so many people are from the economic reality of many tens of millions of Americans. The lowest quintile in the US has a household income of under $20k. $4k is a fifth of their entire combined annual household income. Pretax.

http://mises.org/story/1623

or

http://www.census.gov/prod/www/abs/decennial/1940.htm

since you think anything from the Austrian school of econ is flawed, you can look at the census info.

Err yeah. 64% of the voting age population in 1960 would be, according to the 1960 census, roughly 117,302,00 people. 56.8% of the population in 2009, according to the estimate you can find on Wikipedia, is about 173,915,352 people.

That's nearly sixty million more people voting now than in 1960. Sixty million. This is a very large number. Sure, the percentage of voters has gone down to terrible levels - but we've still got 60,000,000 more people voting.

A lot of them can pretend it's not an issue. Our minorities represent a huge number of people...Close to seventy million (whitey only accounted for 200,000,000 in the same survey, so 25% if you add them all up). That's more than the total population of most european states.

We have race issues. We have a LOT of race issues. But we deal with them a lot better than most countries would, given similar demographics.

You did not have an honest question... you had a loaded question.

How many people live in Central Falls, RI? as of 2000, 18,928. Why is this important? Because the City is 1.29 square miles in size. That's right. Roughly one mile on a side. Almost twenty thousand people living in one square mile. How many people live in a square mile up around where you live? You think the residents of Central Falls can grow their own food there, slaughter their own cattle there, and in general survive like you intend to? Because THOSE statistics say that you are 1 in 18928 that will survive an Anomaly relatively unscathed.

So you are just wondering what the statistics are? http://www.census.gov/population/www/pop-profile/files/2000/chap07.pdf Start with this. 46% of all housing units are in Suburban areas. Another 30% are in central cities. That leaves 24% located outside of metropolitan areas... like yours. Meaning that as of 1999, 24% of the US lived in rural areas like yours that would support that independent life style. So, roughly 24% wouldn't have major issues in the event of a major Anomaly... at first... because as has already been pointed out, some percentage would then seek out to take what that 24% had for themselves... and I'm willing to bet that a Majority of that unknown percentage would be more aggressive about taking, than the majority of the 24% would be about keeping.

C- Because we have a wasteful government that will spend billions on wars. (if we spent as much on education as on warfare, we would be number 1 in the world, but we dont, so we're somewhere around number 40 in quality of education)...

Umm... we (I assume you mean the "United States") do spend more on education than on warfare. Even if you consider the entire DOD budget -- much of which is not spent on "warfare" but on being ready for warfare -- the DOD outlays are about the same as those for public primary and secondary education (I'm too lazy to track down exact figures for the same year for both categories though - try using google).

You may be making the mistake of looking at only the Federal budget -- most education spending is from state/local governments (and some is from private individuals/organizations) in the United States while all of the defense spending comes from the Federal budget (this is not a surprise - the US Constitution doesn't authorize the Federal government to involve itself in Education, but requires it to provide national defense -- although the Constitution is often overlooked which gives us the Department of Education and NCLB).

Some references... Page X shows a total 2005-2006 public Primary/Secondary expenditure on education (so excludes expenditures on universities, junior colleges, and all private schools etc) at $527B. The entire DOD budget for 2009 is under $550B

What about Mexico? Goods don't cross there? And terrorist would never enter through Canada right? I thought this was about security, why the huge loop hole (5,525 miles of it)?

Yes there is more trade with Canada, 49 billion dollars worth in Oct of 08, but there was 40 billion dollars worth with China and 34 billion with Mexico source, they don't get an exception.

Do you believe that if Mexico did more trade with us, that we would make an exception for them?

The 15 employee limit is the MIMINUM standard under federal law.

States are free to set lower limits. The state I live in has no lower limit. Since this is being tried under California law the limit is 5 employees.

In the US some one-third of all employees work for companies with less than 100 employees. Your suggestion that the limit be raised to 100 would exempt a large percentage of the US workforce from laws protecting them against workplace discrimination.

Some professions are practiced almost exclusively in small companies.

Very bad idea.

Here is the source for the employee size statistics:

http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/smallbus.html

1. The rural population has power disproportionate to their population because they make the food you eat. The ag industry drives this country. If you think dependance on foreign energy sources is bad, meditate on the consequences of a dependance on foreign food.

Speaking of, the arguments I hear against ag subsidies tend to be as dumb and poorly framed as your arguments against personal gun ownership.

2. The electoral college was a deal made with every state as they entered the Union. Reneging on that deal would be justifiable grounds for separation from the Union, IMO.

As others have pointed out in this thread, something like an electoral college is necessary in an Enlightenment-style Republic. It is necessary because it prevents mob rule democracy.

3. "...the usa has been mostly rural throughout its history, but is shifting to majority urban in recent years..."
The US has been mostly urban since before the Great Depression. http://www.census.gov/population/censusdata/urpop0090.txt

4. If you really want to get rid of personal gun ownership, start the process of amending the Constitution.

First, there are a variety of lots-of-money-only ways to increase wealth, including preferred stock, invitation-only venture capital groups, companies with shares with values in the many thousands of dollars (e.g. Berkshire Hathaway), tactics that require a large investment to engage in such as overseas investing and taking full advantage of tax credits/shelters/whatever; and then, of course, the more money one has the more effectively one can attempt to start a new business or make improvements on an existing process since one can start at a larger, more efficient scale.

Lol.. opertunity doesn't mean taking from the poor and giving to the rich. It doesn't even mean " return on investment scales increasingly with investment". Preferred stock generally happens when a person take a significantly higher amount of risk and the company in question is in a position of need. You can pool your money with others and do the same. Everything else you listed is nothing but opportunity. So what if rich people have more opportunities? It doesn't mean they are taking anything from anyone else. As long as the mechanics of the investment if creating value and worth, new wealth is being created and nothing it takes from anyone- rich or poor.

Most people are in debt, so they're actually getting poorer over time all else being equal (which it is not--they presumably have other sources of income!). I've had a rather hard time finding detailed statistics, but http://www.directlendingsolutions.com/2007-consumer-statistics.htm gives an overview.

Being in debt is a conscious decision on their part. You can't expect to penalize someone else for an action you take. Personally, I am not in debt, I don't make much more then most people, I just spend my money more wisely. But because you decide to go into debt to get what you can't afford, it doesn't mean that the rich are taking anything from the poor.

As far as whether the poor are actually getting poorer, they seem to be getting relatively poorer, i.e., not keeping up with economic growth while the higher income brackets are pulling away from them, according to http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p60-235.pdf

Even if they are getting poorer, it isn't because the rich are taking anything from them and it isn't because of any policies that was put in place because of Bush. In fact, there are no substantially different policies under Bush then there was under Clinton other then taxes collected. And even the tax cuts were across the board percentage wise. And no, Clinton didn't ballance the budget, he approves things that cause an increase in revenue that was temporary and can not be repeated.

But, anyway, whether the poor get poorer depends on the structure and availability of options to go into debt as well as the inflation rate.

The only way the poor get poorer is when they make an action or transaction that costs them money. It is all up to them. Inflation would be the only way this could happen in absence of that and inflation would effect the rich just the same as the poor.

If you would have provided numbers and attempted to do some math on this, you would know that it just isn't happening. Not like you or the GP is trying to claim anyways. Currently, the poor are getting poorer because energy costs is causing a run on inflation and that wasn't a part of a bush policy. Of course energy costs effect those with less more because it isn't an infinite usage model. There is a certain amount that everyone will use then it stops after a certain point making it easier for people with more money to handle it better. At the root of everything, energy costs can be blames. When it is low, poor people do well. When it is high, they spend all their extra income on it and there is a lag between the inflation adjustments where people demand more wages to cope with the problem.

First, there are a variety of lots-of-money-only ways to increase wealth, including preferred stock, invitation-only venture capital groups, companies with shares with values in the many thousands of dollars (e.g. Berkshire Hathaway), tactics that require a large investment to engage in such as overseas investing and taking full advantage of tax credits/shelters/whatever; and then, of course, the more money one has the more effectively one can attempt to start a new business or make improvements on an existing process since one can start at a larger, more efficient scale.

Most people are in debt, so they're actually getting poorer over time all else being equal (which it is not--they presumably have other sources of income!). I've had a rather hard time finding detailed statistics, but http://www.directlendingsolutions.com/2007-consumer-statistics.htm gives an overview.

As far as whether the poor are actually getting poorer, they seem to be getting relatively poorer, i.e., not keeping up with economic growth while the higher income brackets are pulling away from them, according to http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p60-235.pdf

But, anyway, whether the poor get poorer depends on the structure and availability of options to go into debt as well as the inflation rate.

poverty rate is about 12.5% One in 8 people in the US live in poverty. That is bad for a developed nation, worse than Thailand for instance.

I agree with the incarceration stats, but the poverty stat is misleading. "Poverty" in the US isn't what it is in Thailand. Eligibility for government assistance is determined by income level, which determines "poverty". Many impoverished people are receiving food, rent, and utility subsidies, which allow them to have food, housing, heat, and electricity on the cheap which frees up their "poverty" wages for things like satellite TV and overpriced used cars. They watch 300 channels of color TV every night, while impoverished people in Thailand are living in cardboard boxes and picking through garbage dumps looking for recyclables to trade in for food money. When you start judging poverty by the percentage of people living in squalor and picking through garbage cans to survive, the US is much better than Thailand.

Why can't we just agree that taxes in general are a bad thing?

Because that just is not the case; it is an oversimplification. From the rest of your post I take it you live in the US. A lot of US-ians never take the time to see if their mantra of "This Is The Best Country In The World" is actually correct by comparing their own country to other countries. When you compare the US to other countries you will see:

• the US does not compare good when you look at how happy its inhabitants are.
• the US has the largest number of people doing life sentences because of something they did as a minor
• poverty rate is about 12.5% One in 8 people in the US live in poverty. That is bad for a developed nation, worse than Thailand for instance.
• more than 1% of the US population is in prison

Why am I bringing all of this up in a taxes related context? The end of Soviet Russia has proven that too much tax (everyone gets the same, in theory) did not work. There was not enough incentive. The total opposite, having as little tax as possible, which you sort of see in the US, is also not working correctly.

A lot of the countries that are higher on the happiness list (or lower on the crimes etc. lists) have way higher taxes than the US. This allows for instance the authorities here in NL to prevent or counter-act ghetto-forming by opening up 'buurthuizen' (neighborhood houses) in which people can follow courses etc. This leads to less crime and more people doing something useful in our society.

Is the government as productive with money as a private business? No. But there are things better left to government. Do I like paying tax? No. Would I rather pay less and live in a less pleasant environment? No. So I pay tax and I am glad for the system we have here in the Netherlands. But then again, our politicians seem to be a lot less corrupt ("campaign donations" here are frowned upon) and we have to reach consensus because we do not have a winner-takes-all system like in the US.

The bottom line: please look beyond your own country to see how taxes can add to the welfare of people paying those taxes. And then: please try and change your political system in a way that taxes are put to better use. Sorry if I seem to be patronizing, but I rather see the US turn into something good that something worse; and that makes me care.

The statement "the world population is increasing exponentially" is completely wrong. I wished that people would check their facts before posting decade-old misinformation!

The world population is increasing exponentially.

No it isn't.

The rate of growth has been slowing for decades. It's not only sub-exponential, it's been sub-linear for 20 years - the world's population was growing at 83M/yr in the 80s, and will end this decade with an average growth of less than 80M/yr, despite a larger population.

the most likely scenario is that we will simply continue growing our consumption until we run out of the resources

Why do you believe that's the most likely outcome? Entire nations have behaved in exactly the opposite manner as you suggest they would; for example, Germany's energy consumption hasn't changed in 20 years, despite a strong economy and substantial population growth. Now that the population of the country is shrinking, its overall energy consumption will most likely also fall.

It is an enormous and fallacious oversimplification to suggest that humans are the same as yeast, for both theoretical reasons (we're able to reason about our situation) and evidential ones (e.g., Germany).

This is the same argument folks in the US use to justify the lack of public transport.

Funny how it works that way. Cell phones too. I see that your website is hosted in the UK. You happen to have any experience with small US cities? Or are you another slashdotter speaking authoritatively about things you don't understand.

The fact is that the US is 80% urban and suburban, so getting decent services to those folks (in both broadband and public transport) shouldn't be a problem. What is the problem, with internet connectivity anyway, is the deeply entrenched telecoms companies with their local monopolies.

No. You probably are using US Census "metropolitan statistical areas" which are not necessarily fully urban. These are regions which the US Census has decided to group into economic areas of influence with one or two big cities at the core. For example, here's a map of the state of New Mexico showing how the state is divided into economic regions by the US Census Bureau. It uses the boundaries of counties. The Albuquerque metropolitan statistical area covers four counties and a lot of rural land. Albuquerque is a city of roughly three quarters of a million crudely in the center of Bernalillo county.

My weak understanding is that the US is somewhat over 50% urban, including "suburban" areas. Further, US cities are notorious for low density "urban sprawl", vast areas of buildings on postage stamp lots with no more than a couple of stories to them. It's a lot harder to provide broadband services to such areas than the dense cities more typical of Europe.

If the uploaded data is not available for download, but is only available to AWS applications running on Amazon's (paid for) compute service, then Amazon deserves nothing but contempt and an "Up yours" for this.

Seriously? Or did somebody just put sand in your pancakes this morning?

As an AWS user, I think this is great. It means I don't have to waste time and money copying over a public dataset. When I read about this I fired up a virtual Linux box, attached the census data as /dev/sdb, and spent a couple hours rummaging. Total cost: $0.70. If I had had to copy everything over first, it would have been $20 in bandwidth, plus a long time waiting for the 200 GB to transfer.

You realize that these datasets are public, right? For the census one, you can already download it for free. Do you want Amazon to make it extra-super-free or something?

I presume it's the same for the others. But if not, you should put your money where your very active mouth is. It would take maybe 15 minutes work to get an Amazon server up and running, attach all the public datasets, and set up a web server.

I'm so very tired of people who say "somebody should do X!" but aren't willing to be that somebody.

Most of the data they've listed is available for public download elsewhere, such as the U.S. Census data. The 2000 Census is available from the Census bureau's website.

Sure, that might overlook one or two amazing autodidacts, but I think it's a reasonably safe strategy to help filter the candidates down. Now, if you have 5+ years experience, well, maybe... But why should we take the risk? And since you're competing in a bigger pool (of uneducated workers), you'll get a lower wage. C'est la vie.

Sure, that might overlook one or two amazing autodidacts, but I think it's a reasonably safe strategy to help filter the candidates down. Now, if you have 5+ years experience, well, maybe... But why should we take the risk? And since you're competing in a bigger pool (of uneducated workers), you'll get a lower wage. C'est la vie.

I believe the reasoning is that teaching in a private school is more desirable than teaching in a public school.

Depends on the school. In New York, the most prestiogous ones also pay really well (and come with tabs in the 20,000-30,000 per year range). A lot of the other schools (in most states) are parochial/religious and charge tuition that barely covers their operating costs. Most state/city governments actually give the public schools about the same per child as many private schools charge in tuition (before financial aid-I went to a school where nobody paid the actual rate and it was always in the red). The US-Census press release put the public school figure at around $8,287 for 2006 and the a href=http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_056.asp>National Center for Education Statistics puts the avg. 2003/2004 tuition at $5,049 (elem.) and $8,412 (sec.)). The rest of the costs at both schools are made up of gov't funding, which public schools probably have an edge in, and contributions (which vary widely by school.) Basically, a lot of private schools barely have the money to pay their teachers their current salary, much less a higher one.

I know a lot of religious school teachers, and, yeah, they do it 'cause they don't want to teach in public schools, but also 'cause the requirements are a lot lighter: They only need a masters if they want to get a higher pay grade. Often hours are flexible, and free tuition for their kids. (A lot of my friends are teaching at the same school they went to.) There's also a sense of community around it and just a variety of factors. The pay cut is big enough that it's not just the diserability factor.